


Reconstruction

by ArchitectOfTheStars (AdaEinar)



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: (can that mean platonic relationships?), Angst, Best Friends, Esmoroth, Ex-Best Friends, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Grace finally reads Simon’s book, Grace in mourning, Grace understands that Simon was awful but that doesn’t mean she can’t miss him, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Post-Season/Series 03, Simon took the advice “write what you know” to heart, Simon's book, and oh boy she REALLY misses him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29628324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdaEinar/pseuds/ArchitectOfTheStars
Summary: Grace knew she had to rebuild the Apex into something better. So she came up with the Reconsruction plan.The plan was simple: find every car the Apex had ever raided and destroyed, and fix it so it looked like the Apex had never been there. Though the Mall Car had been their first project, it had taken them weeks to get through. Now it was almost back to its original state. Unfortunately for Grace, to finish repairing the car, she has to confront what she's tried to ignore since . . . well . . . she doesn't want to think about that.But'll have to. Because to finish reconstructing the mall car, she has to confront Simon's room.
Relationships: Simon Laurent & Grace Monroe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	Reconstruction

Grace called it the Reconstruction Plan, which she thought was clever—the plan consisted of reconstructing every car the Apex had destroyed, but its purpose was also reconstructing the Apex itself. Reconstructing it into something better, newer, and _right._ Emphasizing that in the name of the plan was creative, and it seemed like something Simon would've . . .

Anyway.

The plan was simple. Find every car the Apex had ever raided and destroyed, and fix it so it looked like the Apex had never been there. It was hard work. Each car took days—after all, chaos was always easier than order. The Mall Car had been their first project, and also the longest. Though they’d started reconstructing it the day after Simon . . . the day after Simon . . . anyway, they’d started reconstructing it a day after that, but though they’d reconstructed around fifteen cars, the mall car was still unfinished.

Once they’d cleaned it up, the plan was to leave it behind. Keep moving on, on to other cars to fix and other children to save and lessons to learn. Don’t linger, just fix and keep. Moving. On.

It was a brilliant system for reconstructing train cars, but it didn’t work as well on people.

The Apex had almost finished cleaning and reconstructing the Mall Car. You could hardly tell they’d been there. Walls and floors had been scrubbed or repainted clean of graffiti, everything had been put back into its proper place, and whatever was too destroyed to be recovered had been wheeled. The car looked like a normal, clean, undisturbed mall again.

All except for Simon’s room.

Grace had ordered the children to leave his room alone until the last possible moment—the order hadn’t quite been phrased that way, but that had definitely been the message. But now, with the last stages of cleaning wrapping up, Grace had to confront this last remnant of what the Apex had once been.

She closed the door to his room and leaned against it, pressing her forehead into the metal, as if she needed it there to support her. Maybe she did. Being in this room was difficult, in part because it was so comfortingly familiar.

Breathing deeply, she turned towards the rest of the room. Time to figure out exactly how she was going to return it to its original state.

Simon's room was, as always, almost freakishly neat. When they’d first moved into the Mall Car, that had made her uncomfortable, not just because no one should be that supernaturally tidy, but also because it reminded her of her old home off the train. But with time she'd adjusted to it, even started to like it, and now, being in Simon's room calmed her. It felt like being with Simon himself.

Simon, before they ended up on opposite sides of a conflict and he tried to kill her, that is.

She took a deep breath. Maybe she wouldn't do anything to Simon's room. Sure, it wasn't the way the mall car had been when they found it, but it was clean and not destroyed, and . . .

And the truth was, she just couldn't bear to move Simon's myriad of books and notebooks and figurines, getting rid of the last remnants of her best friend. She couldn’t stand disturbing what he’d left behind. This room was almost like her tribute to him. His grave.

It felt wrong to mourn him. It felt wrong to mourn him when he’d tried to kill her, when he’d killed Tuba, when he hadn’t been able to pull himself out of the twisted worldview they’d accidentally constructed together. She shouldn’t mourn and miss a monster, right? He didn’t deserve it. And yet at the same time, Grace hated that she felt that way. She hated that she couldn’t mourn for her best friend, whom she’d lost to death and fanaticism, without feeling guilty.

Maybe Simon wasn’t the only one who wished things could go back to the way they were.

Except, no, that wasn’t true. Of course she missed the years when their friendship had been unquestionable, when they’d been content and connected and confident together. But she didn’t want to return to that time when she’d been lost in the fog of Apex rhetoric and endlessly digging herself deeper underground. As painful as it was now, at least she knew she was doing the right thing. Finally.

She just wished Simon could be there with her, doing the right thing, too.

Grace slid to the ground, her back still pressed against the door, as the burning of tears began behind her eyes and in her throat. She finally had a chance to cry again. Since that awful moment, kneeling next to a pile of ash on the walkway between cars, sobbing her heart out, there hadn’t been a single second where she was alone and allowed to act weak. But now she could. Now she could disintegrate under the realization that her best friend was gone, that he had tried to kill her, and tht she _still missed him._

Grace cried. She didn’t try to keep it in, she didn’t try to stay quiet, she didn’t worry that someone would hear. She let herself whimper and gasp for breath and tremble as the sobs racked her body, taking everything from her, all her pain and exhaustion and fear. She missed Simon. Simon was gone, he didn’t exist anymore, and she hadn’t gotten a chance to reconstruct their relationship before she lost him. She regretted so much. Friendships, decisions, teachings she’d taught without knowing they were true. All those green digits rising up her arm. It all attacked her, coming out in burning hot tears stinging their way down her face and fierce hiccups cutting into her chest and throat and head. It hurt, and it felt _wonderful_ , to finally cry until she couldn’t cry anymore. To sit curled up in her friend and near-murderer’s room and drain herself of every last tear and shred of breath.

Finally, once her face had dried and her shaking had stabilized into a gentle trembling, she stood up and made her way over to Simon’s desk, trying to ignore how empty the room felt in his permanent absence.

An incomplete diorama lay on his desk. Little soldiers clustered in groups on fields of fake grass, the stand for the lamp denizen they’d remover from the room a few days ago hanging over it, sketches of plans laid out to the side. She’d forgotten that he’d been working on this project before they set off on that fateful raid. What had it been a model of? The battle of . . . Esmeroth, was it? Right. This had been the central battle of his trilogy. Because . . . why was that, again?

She should know what had happened during that battle. She _would_ know if she’d ever gotten to reading his book.

She should have read his book.

Where was it? She began shifting pieces of paper aside, scanning the bookshelves for three notebooks. It had to be here somewhere. The first book had been returned to his room, but where had Lucy put it? And where were the other two installments of the trilogy? Had he ever finished the third book? She couldn’t remember, and at the moment, that made her feel incredibly guilty.

There it was. Three notebooks, stacked together. The one on the top was titled “Rise of the True King”. She picked it up, her hand trembling ever so slightly, and opened it.

She skipped the foreword—she knew it far too well—and the dedication, sure the book had been written for her and afraid to have her suspicions confirmed. Instead, she started with the prologue.

> _Levett had been born in darkness, but by the end of his story, he’d burned with the brightest light in the world._

Grace tried not to smile. No doubt Simon had thought that was a dramatic, gripping hook, but she couldn’t read it without cringing at how cheesy it was. She continued.

> _He’d found his way to light with the help of the Thirteen, a brave and bold band living by their wits in the shadow of the great and terrible kingdom Esmeroth._

Huh. Esmeroth was the evil kingdom, not the good one. She hadn’t expected that. Also, “a brave and bold band living by their wits in the shadow of . . .”? Seriously? The only way he could’ve made it more obvious that “the Thirteen” was supposed to parallel the Apex would have been by naming it “the Peak” or something.

> _Though the Thirteen helped him on his journey, the one who really stood by his side was Kanetta. Through her incomprehensible methods, she found a way to break through Levett’s shields and build a friendship with him that no one could break. A friendship built of trust, of love, of truth and understanding. Nothing could have torn them apart. Nothing—_

She slammed the notebook closed.

This was _painful_. Why had Grace thought this would be a good idea? She stood up, grabbing the other two books. She _would_ read them eventually, she knew. Probably hundreds of times. But for now, she took a deep breath, opened the door, and gestured to the nearest Apex child.

“Clean out his room like the rest of the mall,” she instructed. “I’ll help, I just need to . . . put something away first.”

“Yes, Grace.”

Grace walked toward her room, where she would store the books safely in her backpack. As she walked, she was careful to keep a straight back, to keep a genuine smile on her face, to wave to the children she passed. To take note of their emotions, to make sure she knew their names. Things a leader did. Things you do when you’re not in mourning.

Someday she would read his book. Someday she would come to terms with what he’d done, who he’d become. Someday, she might even get a chance to have him explain it for himself.

But for now, she had reconstruction to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of complicated emotions regarding Simon’s arc, but I can’t quite articulate them because I’m still figuring them out myself. This story served as . . . I don’t know, something to help me think through my thoughts on his arc? Some semblance of closure, or mourning? I’m not sure, but I do know that I needed to write this. Because that last scene of episode ten, and pretty much the entire last half of season three, absolutely wiped me out emotionally.


End file.
